ONE DESIRE SHE'D NEVER REGRET HAVING
(One-Shot)
Disclaimer: I do not make any money out of this story, nor does Galactik Football belong to me.
"Come on, it's your turn!", Tia said as she drank some more Vodka.
Mei and Tia were having a girly night down at a bar - in their slight drunkenness they'd invented a game where one comes up with two men they both know, and the other has to answer who they prefer in looks, in vice-versa of who they really prefer. It was quite a good laugh.
"Hmm let me think.. your's was a bit harsh!" The blue-eyed girl said as she cheekily smiled to her teammate. "Ok, here it comes! … So, who would you choose, Nork Agnet, or Clamp?"
The girls bursted out laughing.
"There's not much choice, but I'll have to say 'Clamp'!" Tia said. Mei agreed, as Nork was more eligible and handsome than Clamp..
It was now Tia's turn to think up of two names. Mei drank some more alcohol, Tequila this time, while Tia was thinking what to ask her.
"Alright I've got two." Mei waited eagerly for the question, as they were both enjoying this much-needed girl-night out. "Would you go for... Aarch, or Artegor?" Tia asked.
Mei didn't take time to think, "Definitely 'Artegor'!"
"Seriously? You prefer Aarch?" Tia smirked.
"Yea, he's surely more charming than Artegor!" Mei said.
"True, but come on, Artegor's got that long wild hair and he's mysterious and all! Aarch is like… a big teddy-bear!" Both the girls fell into laughter after Tia's comment.
After a few more rounds of their game, along with some more drinks, the girls decided they had had enough for the night and headed back to the Academy.
The following morning, both having no idea how they had managed to arrive back after leaving the bar, they both had quite bad hangovers, and to make things worse, they had training - but luckily, that was in the afternoon.
The team were all gathered up in front of the Holo-Trainer listening to Aarch explaining what today's training session will consist of.
The kids were all listening and paying attention to what their coach was saying.
Tia leaned over to Mei and whispered, "Remember, you said you preferred him yesterday night!" while giving a look towards their coach as she was saying to Mei.
"Yea right! As if I'd like the teddy-bear!", Mei laughed quietly to Tia.
As Tia retreated back to her 'listening' position, Mei started reflecting what had happened last night.
Did she seriously say she liked Aarch? Nah, it was just a 'comparison game'.
She couldn't help but inspect her coach, though.
She didn't see anything special in him, sure she thought he was better-looking than Artegor, but he was their coach, and he was old, she never had any interest in his looks whatsoever. Nor did she ever notice his looks.
Mei just laughed in ridicule to herself about even thinking of what she had just wasted time 'inspecting'. 'He's Aarch for God's sake!' - such were the thoughts passing through her mind.
The following day..
Mei had just came back to the Academy after a beautiful day consisting of only her favorite thing in the world - shoe shopping.
She had bought more than she usually did, since having received her paycheck from a shampoo advert just a few days before.
High heel sandals, Roman-sandals, ballerina shoes, leather boots, short boots, ankle-boots.. you name it, she bought it! She was as happy as a little child on Christmas morning.
When she arrived to her room she couldn't even close the door after her, having her hands full, she just headed straight to her closet to start stacking the new additions of shoe-boxes she had just bought. Her closet was going to explode!
As she got up on a stool putting box on top of another, admiring her growing collection while doing so, she couldn't reach further up, she stretched as much as she could on the stool in order to put the box of her new sparkly gold sandals on top. Right as she managed to put the box on the top-most one, she felt the stool under her flipping over, rushing her down from on top of it, along with a number of shoe boxes falling down on her like a 'rain of shoes'. Just not so quite as she'd imagined a rain of shoes would be.
By utter coincidence, Aarch was passing through the corridor in front of the girls' room as he heard the noise of falling objects.
He knocked, and peaking through the open door he said, "Need some help?" sort of sarcastically, as he could see the overloaded closet which was adjacent to the main door.
Mei came out from under the pile of boxes and shoes and nodded to her coach as she laughed at the scene. So did he.
Being tall (almost even abnormally tall to some extent), it was easy for him to reach high places.
"Ehh, women and their shoes!", he said sighing as Mei got up from the floor.
The coach and the player started putting shoes into their corresponding boxes while stacking them.
As he stretched his arm to put a box in the top-most level, his black shirt stretched a little upwards, showing a little of his bare torso underneath. She saw this fracture-of-a-second scene, and awkwardly to herself looked straight at it.
As Aarch left after she thanked him, she still felt a little sensation in her remembering the little bare skin of his that she got to see.
She laughed at herself, again. He's a regular man, he had everything every other man had, what she had felt was just an admiration towards the opposite sex in general, not to Aarch - this was what she reasoned to herself.
She had completely forgotten all about the weirdly funny thoughts about Aarch she had had in the previous days.
The Snow Kids were during a training session in the Holo-Trainer. They were during a match simulation against holograms of the Xenons, who they were to compete against in three weeks time.
The training session was going well, the Snow Kids were in control of the match. Luur had taken a strong shot at goal, but the sleepy goalkeeper woke up just in time to make a brilliant save.
"Over here Ahito!" Mei shouted alerting the goalkeeper to pass her the ball as there were no opponents surrounding her.
Ahito shot the ball with a strong kick, Mei controlled the shot beautifully as it arrived to her.
"Brilliant controlling Mei!", the middle-aged coach congratulated over the earpiece.
As she heard his voice, tender, yet strong, complementing her, it made her weak. She got confused and fell straight to the ground, landing on her hand.
This was the man that she preferred over Artegor, the man who helped her when a pile of shoes fell on her, the same one who she blushed as she saw just an inch of his bare skin. Hearing him complement her (even if it was innocent), she was having even more thoughts about him.
Her hand had suffered quite an impact, and it had swollen a bit. Simbai ordered that she gets out of the Holo-Trainer so she can treat her hand before it swelled up even more.
She got out of there and sat on the couch of the training-area while Simbai was examining her injured hand.
Training was almost over, Aarch gave his team a few rounds of stretching to cool-down after the simulated match. He left his seat to go check on how Mei was doing.
"How is her hand Simbai?" Aarch said as he approached the medic.
"It's nothing serious, Aarch. But I'm wrapping it up in a bandage so the swelling does not continue," the motherly-figure nurse said.
"Alright. Mei, I hope it wasn't my fault in getting you distracted when I spoke over the earpiece!" he said in worry.
"No coach, of course not! My foot slipped," even hearing herself talk made her feel ridiculous at her invention of the simplest of excuses. She looked into his eyes while replying to him.
They had made slight eye-contact. It was just this little time that she needed to see just how beautiful his eyes were.
He returned back to his seat to finish the session.
She felt that 'little sensation' again. Maybe Aarch did have something that she saw in him which other men didn't have.
"This is nonsense!", she said to herself on the thought of him again.
How could such thoughts about him arise in her head? He's her coach. He's old. He's got white hair. He's almost as old as her father. There's a gap of about 20 years between them, she couldn't even possibly think of being attracted to him!
But maybe it was all because of these things that made her think about his looks. Some people's minds are weird, yes.
All alone thinking, she denied that she could be attracted in some strange way to Aarch.
It is very hard for one to deny their own feelings, even if one has doubt whether said feelings are existent or not. While trying to deny these feelings, they will haunt oneself even more - the surrealism and unconscious of the human mind.
Mei was in her and Tia's room one afternoon laying on the bed flipping the pages of a beauty magazine, bored considering she had already read it a few times before. The Holo-TV was on, though no one was watching it since Tia was taking a shower.
Mei was reading an overview report of a fashion show she had attended a few weeks before. It hadn't been much appealing to her, as was the article.
Her denying of her possible crush on their coach was about to haunt her for real - a program of matches from past Galactik Football Cups was on. Coincidentally, snippets of a Team Akillian match came on.
Mei's interest-level sparked up. She lifted her sight from the magazine to the Holo-TV, to see a young blonde Aarch and his teammates trashing The Cyclops. Her sight was fixed on the screen. She just kept looking, ignoring her 'crushing-on-their-coach' mind-madness.
"And you said you didn't like him, ha?", Tia burst out sarcastically teasing Mei as she got out of the bathroom brushing her wet hair.
Mei got startled, as she was deeply lost into the images of the TV. "Ohh come on! It just came on the TV by coincidence!"
"Yea, yea.. you were watching it by coincidence too!", Tia started teasing Mei again while laughing.
Mei sighed.
"I was just joking, silly. Seriously, as if anyone like us would like Aarch! He's almost as old as our fathers!" Tia said. Mei agreed, to clear herself up with Tia.
"Still, Artegor's better-looking you know!", Tia continued to cheekily joke around with Mei as she returned back to the bathroom to dry her hair.
"Aarghh!", Mei threw a pillow at her to make her stop. Tia laughed as the pillow missed her.
Mei kept watching the program after Tia left the room. There were several mentions of Aarch, and another snippet of him playing showed up, this time when he was with The Shadows.
This was her moment of astonishment - as her eyes looked deeply unto the scene, not getting her sight off the young Aarch, she admired how much black suited him. His blonde hair, blue eyes and tanned complexion matched perfectly with The Shadows' black outfit.
But, still she saw something missing in 'the young Aarch'. That something rough, something noble, something wise and mature. 'That something' was present in the 'current', 'old' Aarch.
She was never the type to like older guys though, she was more the type who'd usually go for the popular guy her age who all the other girls wanted. Were her tastes changing?
One thing is for sure; it takes maturity in a young girl to like an older man.
Every time she saw him she'd blush to herself, and feel 'that sensation' again.
His beautiful blue eyes.
The elegant bone structure of his face.
The charming smile.
The little goatee of his.
The unusual hairstyle for a guy his age.
The evidently well-built body under the black shirt and tight maroon trousers.
She also started to notice and admire his tender voice, the power he carried in himself, intelligence, wisdom, maturity, charisma and manliness.
She was finding the guys she'd previously dated, including D'Jok and Sinedd, as too childish and immature. Whereas Aarch, now he was strong, mature, and superior.
She never liked beards, nor maturity, or white hair, or father-figures for that matter. But maybe with all these 'set-backs' she drew herself more to liking him.
She liked the superiority he had on the team too; it made him seem even more attractive.
She gave up on denying her crush, although she tried to. She accepted it with all it's weirdness. It was a guilty pleasure, sort of - though she grew to like him more than a 'guilty pleasure' case.
It seemed like life was punishing her for not admitting with herself that she liked him - The more she wanted to make herself forget about all this, the more she saw him. Everyday, everywhere.
She tried to draw herself from not thinking about him, but it all led to obsessing even more about him.
Things were getting a bit out of control, now.
She couldn't pay attention in a single training session, the Snow Kids, along with Aarch himself got a bit frustrated.
She couldn't pass a single day, or night, without thinking of him.
What she thought was just a simple phase-crush grew into an obsession. And the worst is that she quite enjoyed it too, to some extent.
She was finding every excuse and the stupidest of questions to talk to him, and she'd blush whenever he talked to her - childish!
But somehow she didn't hate herself for it.
Her obsession was becoming a bit uncontrollable...
Aarch, in his office signing a dreaded amount of official League papers, heard the door ring.
"Come in!", the coach exclaimed.
"Hi Sir," Mei said as she entered past the door.
"Mei! Come in, come in. What brings you here? Is everything alright?", he said as he welcomed her to take a seat in front of his desk.
She had taken any excuse to see him, and this was getting a bit overboard. To see him more up close, she used as an excuse of asking him to put her as striker again. She didn't really want to be striker, and knew that he wouldn't put her as striker since she had already asked him once before, she just wanted to 'feed' her fantasy of him - ridiculous!
"Yes coach, everything's fine. I've come here to see if, by any chance, you might consider to change my position from defender to striker for the upcoming match against the Xenons", she said uncomfortably.
"Heh, you don't give up that easily do you?", he smirked.
God, was he doing this on purpose to her? She loved his smile, let alone smirking and leaning backwards on his chair!
"Well, I think that we both know that your best position is that of a defender, and you're an excellent defender Mei, I don't know why you want to change your position again!", charismatic as he is, complementing her current performance to try change her mind.
Mei wasn't listening to any of what he was saying, she was studying those lovely lips, the masculinity in the beard and sideburns, along with every other detail he had.
'Damn he always wears polo-neck shirts! A button-up shirt would suit him more. It could show a bit of his chest, for God's sake!', this was what was going on in her head. She was herself's only companion to whom she could 'open-up' to about her opinions on Aarch.
"Uhh.. yes coach! But maybe I can perform well as a striker too, if you give me the chance," she said what she assumed would be a suitable response to any of what he could've said. She was lucky in getting it to sound reasonable enough.
Aarch kept on trying to talk her out of wanting to be striker. She, however, wasn't paying attention to anything he was saying.
She was studying Aarch like an artist studies a model before starting to paint a masterpiece, in all his/her eccentricity.
Luckily she wasn't planning on 'painting a masterpiece', just studying.
His efforts to talk her out of the idea were finally working on her - so he thought. She just felt awkward there, in his office, alone with him, and gave up on continuing the 'wanting-to-be-striker' excuse.
"Alright coach, I respect the time you've taken to hear my request. It's your decision after all," she said.
He walked her to the door while in his mind he was thanking God for making her stop the ranting about wanting to become a striker.
To continue convincing her about his decision, he put his hand on her shoulder and started to talk.
She got goosebumps all over her body. He just did it in support, obviously, but it was all she needed to feel that sensation again. Her heart was beating fast; her pupils dilated. Her body was all numb.
"I'm glad you understand Mei, it's nothing personal of course. You're a great defender and that should be where you belong. It's your natural position!"
She looked into his eyes as he spoke. She couldn't help it.
She rushed herself onto him and kissed him forcefully.
His hand lost all of its grip from unto her shoulder. His eyes wide open, shocked at the unimaginable scene of Mei kissing him. Her closed eyes reflected her burning desire.
She stopped.
Aarch was lost.
Both were breathing heavily as she opened her eyes to see the shocked Aarch.
He was still lost. But grew confidence.
She leaned in again as she saw his sight set on her eyes. He kissed back this time.
Mei got lost onto him, and their kiss got more heated.
Was this really happening? The young beautiful footballer-model kissing her middle-aged coach! She had never imagined that her crush would lead up to this!
Aarch clicked to himself as her hands slid on his chest. He pulled back, questioning to himself what had just happened.
Mei clicked as well.
"Oh God this is so wrong," he said in a slightly broken voice.
They were both ashamed of themselves.
"Aarch! I'm sorry! I didn't kno-", her sentence was cut short.
He was still all numb after the shocking thing that had just happened between them, but he found a way to speak somehow.
"I'm sorry myself, too, Mei" he said as he dug his face into his hands.
She ran to the door in shame.
"Mei! Wait!", he said.
She looked to his side, trying to avoid any eye-contact with him.
"Let's just forget about all this, as if nothing has ever happened. Nobody will know," he said in confusion.
Mei nodded, "Thanks, Coach," she said at the door.
He didn't forgive himself for kissing back, even though what had just happened didn't fully sink in him.
She didn't tell anyone, not even Tia. He didn't tell anyone neither, not even Artegor.
Luckily he's a man with the right mind, and didn't take advantage of her. Most men would have jumped at such an opportunity.
They continued their daily lives as if nothing had happened, even during training, she just ignored the memory. So did he.
Even though she ignored the thought of it, she was never going to regret kissing him, it was the most thing she wanted during that moment and she didn't deny it.
It was one moment she would never forget, one that would echo on her forever, a desire that she couldn't control.
Author's Notes: Heh, don't ask...
Sorry for making it too long, but I wanted to keep it a one-shot. Hope you guys like it!
Thanks for the feedback! Reviews are appreciated :)
Thanks for reading!